NIGHT OF OPEN SEX (Jess Franco, 1981)

La Noche de los Sexos Abiertos 1981 90 MINUTES Severin Films Blu-ray; King Home Video (Spain) CAST: ROBERT FOSTER, LINA ROMAY, EVA PALMER, ALBINO GRAZIANI, TONY SKIOS, JESS FRANCO =======================================

Moira (Lina Romay) is a sexy cabaret stripper by night and a secret agent by day. She is attempting to gain information on the Segunda Guerra Mundial, an international criminal group who are about to locate a hidden consignment of gold bars which was secreted beneath the desert during the last days of the Nazis. Private detective Al Crosby (Antonio Mayans) is also on the trail of the gold and teams up with Moira. Eventually, Prof. Von Klaus (Albino Graziani) provides a complex code which, when deciphered, will reveal the location. Moira is briefly captured by the opposition, tortured, and then freed by Al. They make a concerted effort to break the word puzzle, and finally succeed in locating Von Klaus's desert villa, in which there is a secret room containing the gold.

First though, the right notes have to be played on a keyboard which will electonically trigger the lock mechanism. It involves playing a segment from Liszt's LIEBESTRAUM. When Moira performs the piece, a door opens and the treasure awaits them. The idea of a musical code which contains embedded information goes all the way back to Franco's 1967 KISS ME MONSTER. Considering the fact that Jess Franco has returned to Euro-spy genre again and again throughout his career, it would seem the genre holds a special fascination for him, as well as providing the profilic director with narrative action that functions as a necessary backdrop to his trademark erotic scenes, personal touches, visual spirals, and private jokes. It is impossible to separate the sex from any generic conventions at this point in Franco's career. His later Euro-spy feature DARK MISSION (1988), offers evidence that he could leave aside the obsessive focus on eroticism and make a relatively straight commercial product, but as his more personal early 1980s Golden Film Internacional period and his recent films show Franco is at his best when he is allowed to be Franco.

LA NOCHE... opens with a deliriously filmed strip by Lina Romay, performed in the driver's seat of a classic fifties American car. This all takes place in an ultra-glitzy night spot, where the sexy action is bathed in gorgeous neon hues. Lina's gyrations, Franco's camera work and glittering lighting design seem in perfect harmony this time around, and the sequence is hypnotic. This is a visually gorgeous film about very sordid happenings. There are many elaborate strip tease interludes, references to Poe's story THE GOLD BUG, double crosses, torture sessions (one outrageously borders on a hardcore level of sado-erotic intensity), exotic locales in Las Palmas and Alicante, a hilarious cameo by Franco and Lina Romay has never looked more sexy. She also proves to be a capable comedienne at the center of this frenetic action painting which Franco has composed. (C)Robert Monell 2024